


Why?

by LulaIsAKitten



Series: Octavia Street musings [4]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Angst, Pining, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 18:55:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20747105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LulaIsAKitten/pseuds/LulaIsAKitten
Summary: September 1993The same day as the previous work in this series. Cormoran goes to check on Ilsa.





	Why?

**Author's Note:**

> Another piece filling in the Nick and Ilsa back story. I have written out of sequence, but the pieces sit in chronological order in the Octavia Street series, so I slot them into the appropriate place when I post.

Cormoran hesitated at the gate to Ilsa’s parents’ garden, wondering vaguely if he should go around to the front door. But he was practically family, he’d always used the back.

He let himself in at the gate and ambled up to the back door. He paused a moment, and then knocked.

It took a minute, but Ilsa’s mum answered. Cormoran smiled uncertainly at her. “Hi, Helen,” he said. “Is Ilsa in?”

The older woman nodded. She looked deflated, worried. “She’s upstairs.”

“Um, can I see her? I, er, saw Nick earlier, took him to the train.”

Ilsa’s mum nodded again, her mouth setting in a hard line. “So you know. She’s pretty upset.”

Comoran hesitated. He still didn’t know what had happened, but he assumed from the older woman’s demeanour that the break-up had been at Nick’s instigation. He couldn’t take a side, though. He was hoping to navigate his way through this and keep both his friends, a task that should be made slightly easier by the physical distance between them, by their very separate lives.

“Um, yeah, Nick too,” he said at last. He didn’t want to look as though he were defending his friend, but he didn’t think it was fair to paint him as the villain either. Nick had looked like like shit when he’d waved him off at St Austell station.

Ilsa’s mum had no answer to this, just nodded again and stood back to let him in. Cormoran kicked his trainers off and left them by the back door.

“She’s in her room. Take some tea up?”

Cormoran nodded, and waited while two mugs of tea were poured from the pot and passed to him. He carried them up the stairs. The door to Ilsa’s room was firmly closed. He managed to manoeuvre both mugs into one hand, and knocked on the door gently.

“I’m fine, Mum.” Ilsa sounded weary. “I just want to be on my own.”

“Ils, it’s me.”

A pause, and then the door opened for him. Ilsa stepped back, her eyes downcast, and Cormoran went in. He put the mugs down on her bookshelf as she closed the door, and turned to face her. “How are you?”

Ilsa raised her face, her bloodshot blue eyes meeting his kindly brown ones, and burst into tears.

“Hey, hey—” He pulled her gently into his arms and held her while she cried. She was tiny next to him, almost a foot shorter, her head fitting neatly under his chin. She seemed smaller than normal, as though shock and misery had caused her to somehow shrink into herself, become fragile, breakable. Just two days ago she’d been bright and bouncy when he’d seen her, excited about Nick’s impending visit, larger than life, eyes sparkling. Now she clung to the front of his battered old jumper and sobbed, and he wrapped his arms around her and made soothing noises, found himself kissing the top of her head as though she were a child.

For a long time they stood that way, and Cormoran waited, rubbing her back gently with his big hand, until eventually her hiccoughs started to ease slightly. He stepped back a little, leaning to reach for the box of tissues on her bedside table, grabbing a handful.

“Are you getting snot on my best jumper?” he asked kindly, and she sobbed and laughed a little, accepting the handful of tissues and starting to mop herself up. Cormoran stepped away and gently guided her to sit on the bed. He sat down next to her.

“What happened?”

She looked up at him, her face blotchy, her eyes swollen, her nose red. Her breathing was still unsteady, her voice wobbling. “I thought you’d know. He said he was coming to you?”

Cormoran nodded. “He did, I drove him down for the eight o’clock train.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. Just that you broke up and he didn’t want to talk about it.”

Ilsa shook her head. “He dumped me,” she quavered, and started crying again.

Cormoran sighed and slid an arm around her shoulders, hugging her close.

After long minutes she managed to pull herself together a little again.

Cormoran tried again. “All he said was it was over, and he wanted to go. He looked bloody awful, though. What happened?”

Ilsa sighed. She tossed the soggy tissues into the bin on top of all the others, and grabbed a fresh handful.

“He wasn’t right the minute he arrived last night. He was different, withdrawn. Dinner was awful, really quiet. I tried to talk to him after, and he—he—he just said we should stop seeing each other. He said we’d be too far apart, but we’ve made it work for nine months—” She shuddered to a halt, fighting back yet more tears. “So—” her voice wobbled, and she conquered herself with a huge effort “—so we just went to bed, separately, he slept in the spare room. And—and this morning I found him in the kitchen. I think he was going to go without saying goodbye. Bastard.”

Cormoran quirked an eyebrow at the expletive but said nothing. He’d decided he was going to have to do a lot of sympathetic saying nothing in order not to be deemed on one side or the other.

Ilsa drew a shuddering breath. “And that’s it. He said goodbye and went.”

She raised an anguished face to him. “I don’t understand, Corm. Things were perfect last time he was here. Perfect.” Images flitted through her mind of walks on the beach, shared ice creams, of their quiet connection in the deep of the night as they’d made love in the dark while the rest of the house slept, whispering to one another. She’d spent all night and today going over everything in her mind, hunting for the moment that had changed things, the point at which it had all gone wrong, and come up blank. “Didn’t he say anything, give you any clue?”

Cormoran shook his head helplessly. “Sorry, Ilsa. I know even less than you do.”

A sudden surge of hope filled her face. “But you could ask him. Talk to him for me.”

Cormoran pulled back gently. “Ils, I don’t think—”

“Please, Corm. I just need to know why. What changed? What did I do wrong?” Her pleading eyes searched his face, seeking his help. “Please, Cormoran.”

It would have been so easy to agree. Indeed, in the moment it felt like the kinder option. But then what? He was off to Oxford in a couple of weeks, he couldn’t liaise.

He’d thought about this carefully as he’d walked along the beach after lunch, before coming here. He’d known there was a chance, a good chance, that Ilsa would ask this of him, and he felt very strongly that he needed to keep out of the middle of things in order to maintain both friendships, friendships that each meant a lot to him.

He also knew, although they had never discussed it, how Nick felt about Ilsa. He was absolutely besotted with her, that much was obvious. Cormoran would have laid a hefty bet that Nick was in love with her. He’d not denied it when gently teased. And so this wasn’t a decision he would have taken lightly. Cormoran couldn’t see why Nick would have done it at all, but he certainly wouldn’t have done it on a whim.

He gazed at his oldest friend’s earnest blue-green eyes now, and steeled himself to do what was right and not what she was asking him to do.

“Ils, please,” he said quietly. “Please don’t put me in the middle of this.”

“But you’re his best mate, he’ll talk to you.”

“And you’re my best mate, and I won’t be able to tell you if he talks to me in confidence. Don’t put me in that position, please, Ilsa. I love you both and I want to stay friends with you both.”

She dropped her gaze and looked at the tissues she was twisting in her lap.

“I guess.”

“I’ll do anything else, Ils. I’ll buy you ice cream and chocolate. I’ll get drunk with you and carry you home. I’m here whenever you want to talk, I’ll make sure you’re the first person to have my phone number at Oxford. But please. Don’t ask me that.”

Ilsa sighed, and nodded. “I just don’t understand,” she whispered, and started to cry softly again.

He slid his arm back around her. “I know. I don’t either.”

**Author's Note:**

> And this piece takes me over 150k of Herberts! No sign of it ending.... 😂


End file.
